Water, Water Everywhere – and No Early Warning in Sight
By Ignatius Banda
GWANDA, Zimbabwe , Feb 14 2013 (IPS) – Muzeka Muyeyekwa from Mapfekera
Village in Zimbabwbe’s Manicaland Province wonders what he will feed his
three children for lunch.
The family’s basic food supplies have run out and they cannot replenish them
as the bridge that crosses the local Nyadira River, which links this village
with the outside world and the Watsomba shopping centre, was washed away in
January during the flash floods that spread across the country. Manicaland
Province, which borders Mozambique, is among the worst hit as it has seen
almost 1 metre of rain since mid-January.
However, a few village daredevils have used the disaster to make a quick
dollar by swimming across the flooded river with supplies – charging treble
the price or more for basic goods.
“We cannot cross the river to go to the grinding mill or to get basic food
supplies,” Muyeyekwa tells IPS. “The only supplies reaching us are the
expensive items brought by the daredevils.”
Other villagers say that their food supplies are running low and worry that
the authorities are not acting fast enough to repair the bridge.
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But the local district council chief executive, George Bandure, tells IPS
that the council is mobilising resources for the reconstruction of the
destroyed bridge.
Mapfekera community is not the only one struggling to cope with unseasonal
heavy rains here.
According to the latest United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs report on Zimbabwe, heavy January rainfall across the
country affected an estimated 8,490 people, “of which 4,615 people require
humanitarian assistance in the form of emergency shelter and non-food
items.”
The government’s Civil Protection Unit estimates that up to 5,000 people
across the country lost their homes in the flooding, while the police say
about 100 people have drowned – all since late last year.
Nearly 2,000 school children in the Chiredzi and Mwenezi Districts in
Masvingo Province are being taught outside as torrential rainfall recently
destroyed classrooms in 28 schools.
Clifford Tshuma, a smallholder farmer in rural Gwanda, in Matabeleland South
Province, stands by and watches the effect that a surprise heavy downpour
has on his maize crop. It flattens the stalks, leaving the plants ruined.
“I did not see it coming,” Tshuma tells IPS.
Climate experts in this southern African nation say that the plight of rural
populations is worsened by the lack of sufficient weather monitoring systems
that are able to provide early awareness of rainfall levels.
“Zimbabwe sometimes finds itself less equipped to predict, unprepared to
plan for, and respond to floods,” Sobona Mtisi, a climate researcher with
the Overseas Development Institute’s Water Policy Programme, tells IPS. The
institute has partnered with the Zimbabwean government to formulate climate
change policy. “Early warning systems that focus on floods are not yet well
developed, especially at the local level. These factors combine to ensure
that the country is always caught off guard.”
Since mid-January, heavy rains have hit Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland South and
North Provinces as well as Masvingo Province, which are traditionally
considered dry areas.
According to the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services, the Matabeleland South
and North Provinces have seen rainfall of around 300 millimetres since the
beginning of the year – at least three times higher than the expected
rainfall for the provinces.
“This is much lower than other provinces,” Zimbabwe Meteorological Services
chief, Tich Zinyemba, tells IPS, pointing to Manicaland Province, which
borders Mozambique and has recorded up to 1,000 millimetres during the same
period. “But [the rainfall in Matabeleland] is still unusually high for such
arid regions.”
Adjusting to a new reality
Until the rains began in mid-January, the Matabeleland South and North
Provinces were in the midst of a drought. Local online publication
Bulawayo24 News reported that between July and December 2012 some 9,000
cattle in the Matabeleland South region had died due to the ongoing drought.
Now they are perishing because of the ensuing floods, the publication
reported.
“Floods are recent phenomena in Zimbabwe, and as such, the country is still
adjusting to this new reality,” Mtisi says, explaining that floods began
occurring here in 2000 when Cyclone Eline swept across southern Africa.
Mtisi says that the occurrence of heavy rains, which leave destruction in
their wake, has become somewhat predictable over the past decade. He adds
that with adequate preparation, these losses can be averted or minimised.
“From 2000 to 2010, Zimbabwe had four floods, some of which induced by
cyclones, such as Cyclone Eline (in 2000) and Cyclone Japhet (in 2003). This
means that we have a flood, every two and a half years,” Mtisi says.
“The problem is that Zimbabwe does not have sufficient resources, mainly
technical and financial, to predict, plan for, and manage floods. I do not
think that the hydro-meteorological monitoring departments of Zimbabwe
National Water Authority, Meteorological Department, and the Civil
Protection Department have adequate funds to efficiently undertake flood
preparedness and management activities,” he says.
Mtisi says that despite efforts by international relief agencies to mitigate
these loses, more still needs to be done.
“Although several systems for monitoring hydro-meteorological data are in
place, managed by regional and international bodies, such as the Famine
Early Warning Systems Network and the Southern African Development Community
Hydrological Cycle Observing System, they are insufficient,” Mtisi says.
It will be useful for Zimbabwe to develop an extensive network of
hydro-meteorological stations that monitor river flows and floods, he says,
through agencies such as the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services and the
Zimbabwe National Water Authority.
Very high frequency systems are currently being installed in the country’s
flood-prone areas to ensure that the people there are able to communicate
with different disaster management units that are meant to warn them of high
rainfall and potential disasters.
The point now is how to ensure these systems are operational and working
properly, says Tapuwa Gomo, a development expert who has worked with
international relief agencies in some of Zimbabwe’s flood-prone area.
*Additional Reporting by Nyarai Mudimu in Manicaland Province